


empty echoes

by Teddy0414



Category: Sound Carries
Genre: my favs are sad, someone give them a hug please
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:27:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25478404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teddy0414/pseuds/Teddy0414
Summary: grief is a messy thing.
Kudos: 6





	empty echoes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aelenko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aelenko/gifts).



> fanfiction for abby's (@aelenko) story sound carries!!! it can be found on her account on here and on wattpad! please go read it if you haven't, it's absolutely amazing! and if you've somehow stumbled across this before reading her work, major spoilers for the finale so don't read this first
> 
> i would love to discuss her story and other things on my tumblr, which can be found at themillionthdraft.tumblr.com

“The funeral is tomorrow.”

Colin didn’t open his eyes. If not for the slight hitch in his breathing, Oliver might have assumed he was asleep. He waited for Colin to move, to say  _ something,  _ but when he just lay there with his eyes closed, Oliver tried again.

“Are you going to—?”

Colin sat up then, shook his head. “Can’t,” he said, and that one word held all the raw hurt and grief he’d been carrying around in every step for the past few days. A stronger echo of Oliver’s own, though he wanted to pretend that wasn’t true.

Oliver hated Gabriel as much as he missed him. 

There was a hollow emptiness he felt that came from more than just the empty bed and untouched desk. It was turning to ask a question to remember Gabriel wasn’t there. It was brushing against memory after memory around every corner. It was looking at the tower and remembering the feeling of reaching for Gabriel and finding only empty air.

It was missing his best friend, and wondering if he had ever really been a friend at all.

“What are you thinking?” asked Colin, and it was such a  _ normal  _ Colin question to ask that it took Oliver by surprise. 

“Nothing,” he said automatically. When Colin looked at him incredulously, he shook his head and sat down on his bed. “Everything. He— I— I just want to know what to think of him.”

Colin laughed, a bitter and joyless sound. “You and me both.”

Their eyes strayed in the direction of Gabriel’s empty bed at the same time, and a heavy, thoughtful silence fell over the room. Oliver wished he could just cry about it all and be done with the whole thing, but his ability to feel anything but a constant, hollow ache had disappeared since that night. When Hannah had died, it had been easy to know what to feel—sadness over the loss of a friend—but with Gabriel…

How did you take your anger out on someone when they were already dead?

“I can’t believe he—” Oliver’s voice broke slightly, trying to put what he felt into words was bringing emotions to the surface that he wasn’t sure he was ever going to be ready to deal with. “How could he do that?”

Oliver didn’t even know which of the many things Gabriel had done he was talking about, but Colin seemed to understand. 

“He was a bad person,” said Colin, his voice barely a whisper. “A bad person, but a friend, a—”

Colin’s voice broke too, and a shudder ran through him. Oliver thought that if they were the sort of friends who hugged, he might have hugged Colin then. 

They weren’t, so he drew his knees up to his chest, and rested his head back against the wall. “Him and Leah—” It wasn’t the most important of all the things that had happened, but the thought of it had been tearing at him from the moment he had first heard Colin snap the words backstage. “Fuck. This is just— fuck.”

“I didn’t mean to mess that up for you,” said Colin quietly.

“You didn’t,” said Oliver. “He did.”  _ She did.  _ But Leah was here and Gabriel was dead and Oliver didn’t know who to be angry with or if he was even supposed to be angry anymore. “I know he did some shitty things but—” He didn’t know where he was going with this.

“But he was your best friend,” Colin finished, staring intently at Gabriel’s spotless desk. “And you thought, no, he knows where the line is. He knows not to go so far that he can’t come back. He wouldn’t actually—”

And then Colin was crying: loud, gasping sobs that were so full of anguish Oliver wanted to look away. Instead, he picked Colin’s water bottle off the desk and sat down next to him, holding it out patiently and waiting for Colin to finish. His own aching numbness was unbearable, but Colin’s heartbreak seemed so much worse. 

“It’s why I can’t go to the funeral,” said Colin finally, wiping his face with his sleeve and taking the bottle from Oliver’s hand. “I can’t go there and pretend not to know— not anymore. Not when I have the tape.”

_ We’re actors,  _ Oliver wanted to say, but he knew he couldn’t go and pretend either.

The tape felt like an impossible weight: a truth with the capacity to destroy one memory and redeem another. What was Hannah’s memory worth? What was Gabriel’s memory worth? Why was the choice in the hands of someone like Colin— someone who had suffered enough?

“Whatever you do with the tape,” said Oliver slowly, because if anyone deserved the time to grieve and think before making a decision it was Colin, “we’ll remember him, yeah? The way he was.”

The good—or what had always seemed like it—and the bad. Friend. Murderer. Performer. Manipulator. Genius. Desperate. Charming. Broken.  _ Dead. _

If life cast them in only one predictable role the way Connolly had, then it might have been easier to pick up the pieces that were left. But Gabriel had been more than just the villain, and whatever else might have happened, Oliver knew he would never forget the way his broken body had looked at the base of the tower. 

“As he was,” echoed Colin, and scoffed. “Some comfort, that.” 

It wasn’t, but it was all Oliver had to give.


End file.
